I’m sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, working on one screen and watching Star Trek: Enterprise again on the other. Once a week, I also sit down to watch Star Trek: Discovery, a show I still have mixed feelings about. There’s a lot I like about Discovery, and a lot that I don’t. But out of a sense of loyalty to the franchise I fell in love with through its BBC 2 repeats in late 1970s’ Britain, I persist. And now, as I tool about with one eye on my work and one eye on Enterprise, it occurs to me that my two biggest criticisms of Discovery — its handling of Klingons, and the visual design of its ships and technology — were also my two biggest criticisms of Enterprise. It took me a while to fully accept Enterprise’s decisions, but in the end the simple passage of time and a couple of notorious episodes got me there. So I thought maybe I’d have a closer look at how the two shows compare with each other, how they hold up in the context of most of Trek history, and whether I could rationalise my discomfort with Discovery’s new Klingons and super-shiny technology.
Before we dive in, a couple of notes! First of all, I’m old(ish) and my memory for detail isn’t that great. I did as much research as time permitted, but feel free to leave a comment below if you think I’ve goofed somewhere. Most importantly, if I’ve stepped on toes with image use, leave a comment below and I will remove or correctly attribute the image, per request. (All photographs and official images herein are copyright Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Studios. See end for a list of other attributions). Okay, let’s get on with it!
Both shows are prequels to the original Star Trek, charting the early years of Starfleet history. They both debuted to heavy criticism from some quarters and both struggled to find their feet (an ongoing process in Discovery’s case). Enterprise attempted to re-invent itself with the bold tangent of season 3’s single-story Xindi arc (which found reflection in the real-life 9/11 tragedy in NYC that preceded the series’ debut in September 2001 by just two weeks), as well as taking a much more head-on approach to mating up with Kirk’s era in its planned-but-never-realised 5th season. (With its total of just four seasons, Enterprise stands as the only live-action Star Trek show not to have 7 seasons). Discovery, now in the early stages of its 2nd season, is attempting to soften the blow of its radical re-imagining of, well, everything, partly by putting hair on its controversial Klingons and partly by starting to connect more dots between it and The Original Series (TOS).
comparing the makeup between shows. Well, this is my own effort — thanks Paint!
The Klingons first appeared in The Original Series as smooth-headed, vaguely swarthy-looking humans with dodgy moustaches whose makeup was cheaper and easier to apply than that of the Romulans (hence the predominance of Klingons over Romulans in Kirk’s time). They were then re-invented in 1979 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Legendary Hollywood makeup artist Fred B. Phillips (creator of the original Klingons, not to mention Spock’s distinctive ears) was part of the 5-strong hair and makeup department, so it’s likely he had a hand in the redesign too. The movie’s costume designer, Robert Fletcher, also noted that “Spine comes up over head and down forehead (different from series). Hair on side of head as though trying to cover spine” (from The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Susan Sackett and Gene Roddenberry). For their next appearance, in 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, their new, prominent forehead ridges and wild look were slightly toned down. But despite further modifications to their materials and design over the years for the subsequent movies and TV series — most of which were down to Dan Curry, who won 7 Emmys for his work across the four The Next Generation (TNG)-era sequels — this was the look of the ‘modern’ Klingon that we’ve all come to know and love today. Going into Enterprise as a new viewer then, I did sort of expect any Klingons appearing on the show to at least look like their smooth-headed, goatee-wearing TOS counterparts. But within the first few minutes of the first episode a massive, hairy, bumpy-head Klingon (played by WWE star Thomas ‘Tiny’ Lister Jr.) burst out of a cornfield and nicely shattered that illusion.
Just like Discovery now, Enterprise committed its first foul by confounding expectations of its primary antagonists. According to an article in Star Trek Monthly (Issue 1, October 2001), Executive Producers/Showrunners Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (both with long histories embedded in the modern phase of Star Trek television shows), reasoned that continuity snafus with the aliens and technology were unavoidable, so advancements in film and TV production should be embraced regardless. Production realities are the most understandable explanation for any kind of continuity errors, but before we get into them, let’s have a look at the in-universe explanations for the differences between the smooth- and bumpy-head Klingons. As it is today, with fans struggling to reconcile Discovery’s new-look Klingons with their usual appearance, we spent a good few decades wondering why the Klingons had changed. Several theories were mooted, with some non-canon sources also having a go (notably FASA’s 1982 Star Trek Pen and Paper RPG and some of the licensed Pocket Books novels), until a special two-part episode of Enterprise finally hit the issue at ramming speed.
Capitalising on its position as a kind of history book of the Trek universe, episodes 15 and 16 of the show’s 4th season (Affliction and Divergence respectively) finally explained the mystery of the disappearing ridges as a combination of the degenerative side-effects of Klingon DNA experimentation (based on the earlier human research that had produced the legendary Khan Noonien-Singh), and the Levodian Flu, which caused the whole mess to become an airborne virus. On-screen credits for the Story go to Manny Coto, who had recently taken over as showrunner, and Mike Sussman, for the Teleplay. Essentially, the Enterprise’s own Dr. Phlox is press-ganged by Klingon scientists (including John Schuck, who played the Klingon Ambassador in both Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) into helping produce a cure. After some ups and downs, a cure is indeed produced, although those already infected (and ridge-less) are still left looking more human. Cleverly, a bit of almost throw-away dialogue at the end establishes that the Klingon cosmetic surgery business might begin booming, presumably with smooth-heads flocking to get their ridges replaced. (Dr. Phlox also has a line about the sick Klingons’ brains being slightly altered by the virus, thus explaining the difference between the crude, rough behaviour of the TOS Klingons with the more noble, honourable-warrior attitude of the later Klingons). The whole ‘Klingon discrepancy’ is then put to bed, only to be mentioned again briefly by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Miles O’Brien and Dr. Bashir, when they travelled back in time to 2268 on Trek’s 30th Anniversary in a special episode of DS9 entitled Trials and Tribble-ations. To this idle speculation, an indignant Worf replied that, “We do not discuss it with outsiders.”
Cleverly, Enterprise’s writers had combined the two fan-favourite theories of the last few decades — genetic experimentation and viral mutation — into one canon explanation. This was the culmination of 26 years’ worth of beard-pulling over an issue that was in reality, of course, borne of budgetary constraints — the movie had more money than the TV show, and so better-looking makeup was created. Still, this solution took some swallowing, but eventually most people choked it down. So Enterprise had its moment of reconciliation for the Klingons, while back in the here and now Discovery also has an answer, to do with there being different castes, and that in times of war Klingons shave their heads, and that the season 1 Discovery Klingons were somehow separate from the other Klingons because they were on a sarcophagus ship, and they were sort of puritanical, ‘outsider’ Klingons… And 200 years, something-something… Most of the explanations on the blogosphere here in early 2019 seem quite tenuous to me. But to be fair, that’s pretty much how it was back in Enterprise’s day too. At any rate, only time will tell how well Discovery’s solutions go down with the viewers.
Pe’vIl mu’qaDmey then, Klingons. Let’s move on. My other key point of contention with both series is the look of the equipment and technology on display, specifically, the computer screens and ship interiors. (Discovery’s props are pretty good actually — for example, the phaser has the same basic shape as the classic Kirk-era phaser pistol, but with the triple-barrel design of the Pike-era pilot episode, The Cage). Here, the two shows straddle The Original Series, with Enterprise’s interiors looking like something clearly evolved from current NASA-level tech, and Discovery’s looking more in tune with the modern, TNG era of soft, rounded consoles and shiny touch-screen LCARS interfaces. (No discussion of modern Star Trek’s look and feel is complete without mentioning Mike Okuda, who gave us the colourful, distinctive touch-screen computers and smooth, glowing consoles first briefly established in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and then really brought to life in everything from TNG onwards). It’s a dichotomous difference that is only exacerbated by Discovery’s gee-whizz CGI and production design. Similarly, when Enterprise launched back in 2001 there was consternation from some quarters about its appearance. After all, the series had been touted as a prequel story to Kirk’s legendary 5-year mission, and in the run up to its launch many people (myself included) wondered how Kirk’s beloved plywood-and-lightbulb sets could be retrograded in a reasonable way.
Realistically, of course it was never going to happen quite like that, and looking at it again now, it does make sense: NASA space shuttles, c. 1970s-1990s; the Phoenix in 2063 (experimental warp-drive spacecraft from 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact); the Enterprise NX-01 in 2151 (the first ‘proper’ human spacecraft and star of Enterprise; Kirk’s Constitution class Enterprise NCC 1701 in 2245, and so on. So how, in that context, do we fit Discovery’s jaw-dropping 2256 spaceship technology into the timeline, in-between Enterprise and TOS? Probably the best explanation I’ve seen so far is that the PlayStation 5 tech of Discovery is somehow all experimental and unique, compared to Kirk’s eventual ColecoVision dashboard. I don’t really buy it for a second, personally. The idea is nice, but the disparity is too great to be reasonable. However, a couple of days ago we were blessed with an official, in-canon explanation from Star Trek Discovery season 2, episode 4, ‘An Obol for Charon’. Number One — the character formerly played by Majel Barret in the original Pilot, The Cage — beams aboard Discovery to confer with Captain Pike, and almost immediately we get the following exchange:
As other Internet commentators have pointed out, this is Discovery’s attempt to explain the comparatively primitive look of the Enterprise’s controls under Kirk’s command (and a slightly different but equally primitive look in the Pike-captained The Cage). But to fully understand what’s being said here, we need to understand what’s only being implied. Namely, that in 2265 Pike is promoted to Fleet Captain, which according to Memory Alpha is “…a Starfleet title given to a senior captain, with a different set of responsibilities than a starship captain. This may have been a higher rank than captain or even commodore…”. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer’s Manual — the controversial, non-canon, 1988 supplement to FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game — further explains that it is “…a position held by the heads of ship design teams, with three fleet captains throughout all of Starfleet who are in charge of cruiser-, destroyer-, and escort-class ships respectively.” Thus, or so the scuttlebutt for this episode goes, Captain Pike’s bad experiences with the standard touch-screen, hologram-based technology aboard both his Enterprise and Burnham’s Discovery in 2257 (‘An Obol for Charon’ also features an amusingly haywire Universal Translator) prompts him to retrograde the entire fleet upon his promotion to Fleet Captain 8 years later in 2265.
Well, it does sound reasonable. Whether new fans would know about Pike’s promotion if they hadn’t seen the 2-part TOS episode ‘The Menagerie’ is debatable. But fair enough, Discovery had a go, and it’s not a bad one. Remember, similar howls of derision could be heard around the world at Enterprise’s Klingon explanation. Personally though, I still have to question this cocktail of official explanation and unofficial extrapolation. Primarily, I think it could be assumed that in 8 years the Starfleet Corps of Engineers would have fixed the problems plaguing the Enterprise (remember, it’s apparently only Enterprise that suffered the catastrophic failures), so why would Pike order the entire fleet to be downgraded? Furthermore, every other ship we see in The Original Series of the human, Romulan, and Klingon fleets is of an obviously comparable tech level. The Enterprise’s analogue controls and push-button computers are also their friends’ and enemies’ analogue controls and push-button computers. This can be seen in the movies and TNG-era shows too; the Enterprise D has smooth, glowing consoles, and so too do the alien ships. So even if Fleet Captain Pike did order the complete redesign and retrograding of all Starfleet vessels, it’s likely that we would see our 1960s’ Romulans flying their ships with something more like 1980s’ controls. (The movie-era ships of all races were still largely analogue and clearly evolved from their 1960s predecessors).
There is also the question of canonicity; nowhere are the duties of a Fleet Captain explicitly defined in official, canon material, so the idea that Pike could make such a massive, sweeping change is flimsy at best, not to mention strategically potentially suicidal if Starfleet’s enemies were still running around with more advanced, holo tech. In short, the whole thing is a huge stretch, but that’s the explanation we’ve been given to rationalise or reject. Looking on the bright side we do now have a living, breathing Number One to go with our new Christopher Pike, so that’s super, super cool.
In fairness, too, another interesting thing to consider about any show’s production design — especially genre pieces like Star Trek — is how it reflects the time it was made in. The look of Kirk’s Enterprise throughout The Original Series (and of course The Animated Series), as well as the first six films, was largely defined by Gene Roddenberry’s (and his peers’) experiences in the aeroplanes, tanks and submarines of World War II and the Korean War. Being the military arm of the United Federation of Planets’ political body, Starfleet is essentially the navy. Discipline and routine, ranks and uniforms and orders are missions are all Star Trek staples, and all firmly established in Roddenberry’s original vision (The Next Generation really leaned into the nautical analogy too). The ratio of violent military action to scientific exploration and discovery varies from episode to episode and show to show, but the organised, military underpinnings are always there, and no more present than in the angular, pipe-filled rooms and corridors of Kirk’s Enterprise and her sisters in the fleet. One classic example of this aesthetic is in the TOS episode Balance of Terror, which features a tense standoff between the Enterprise and a Romulan ship (with an incredibly submarine-like interior), in a more or less direct echo of classic naval warfare films. (The episode’s Wikipedia page cites the main influence as 1957’s The Enemy Below, with Robert Mitchum and Carl Jürgens, although my old buddy at NAS Pensacola always used to shout ‘Run silent, run deep!’ at the screen whenever it came on).
but also played the first-ever bumpy-head Klingon, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
In contrast, by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s pre-production period in the early-mid-1980s, the new Enterprise D was conceived of as a family vessel; the officers and crew would have their husbands and wives and children aboard with them throughout their potentially much longer mission periods. As such, the bridge and various other interiors were softer and more rounded, with carpet and soothing cream and beige colours, recessed lighting and even potted plants. Although not always seen on-screen, there were schools and play areas for the children, and more diversity in the ship’s off-duty and relaxation spaces (not to mention the ultimate evolution of home videogame consoles in the form of the holodeck). Times had changed, and under the expert hands of Jim Mees and Richard D. James the art and production design respectively took a more relaxed approach. Even the Enterprise itself was comprised of softer, sweeping curves not wholly un-reminiscent of a Wall Street yuppie’s new Porsche. This was the work of Andrew Probert, who had had a hand in updating the original Enterprise for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. With a design lineage including the original Battlestar Galactica (1978), through Airwolf (1984) and Back to The Future (1984), Probert was originally hired to design the new bridge set, but was later tasked with designing the ship too, after writer David Gerrold noticed an interesting sketch for such by Probert’s desk. Probert’s contributions to the look of Star Trek are considerable, including most of the human and Vulcan ships and tech seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (his concepts for the Klingon bridges in that film basically formed the Klingon design template for all time), the aforementioned bridge and exterior of the Enterprise D, as well as nearly every other ship in season 1 of TNG (including the superbly relaxed-but-menacing Romulan Warbird).
At any rate, the question remains of why Discovery leaned so far into the visual re-design and re-imagining. (To be clear, I’m not talking about the social or cultural aspects of the show, just the looks of the thing). Star Trek was fundamentally conceived of as an extrapolation of our own, ‘real’ human history, and everything in it operates on at least some semblance of scientific principle. Along with its messages of peace and celebration of diversity, the technical aspect is one of the great joys of the show, and there is a large number of people who treasure their manuals and plans. Creating a difficult-to-reconcile fissure with the visuals of the new show seems like asking for trouble. Over at the absolutely encyclopaedic Star Trek technology website, Ex Astris Scientia, the legendary Bernd Schneider (perhaps the most respected representative of Star Trek’s fan tech-heads), puts it quite succinctly: “A well-established continuity of more than 40 years is abandoned for the sake of imposing visuals.” But I think there may be a little more to the answer than just money and bombast.
After the fundamental writing and conceptualisation of the show, there are two obvious answers here — money and rights issues. Financially speaking, Star Trek: The Motion Picture had more money and access to better film-making technology than The Original Series; Enterprise had more than The Next Generation, and Discovery now has more money and better technology than everyone. From a production point of view, it’s your job to make the absolute most of it. This is why Discovery’s Klingons are makeup masterpieces and its visual effects 2019-level CGI, and why its ships have holograms and spore drives and touch-screen panels in 2256, where Kirk’s Enterprise, just ten years later in 2266, has 1965-level wooden computers and painted screens and toothpaste tube caps for buttons. It’s also why both Enterprise and Discovery hit bumpy waters right out of dry-dock. Copyright issues, on the other hand, seem a more interesting explanation than just how much money CBS could rain on the production, but require us to take at least a quick look at the franchise’s business history.
The Original Series was made by Desilu Productions for NBC. Desilu was founded in 1950 (by none other than Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, of course), and then acquired by Gulf+Western in 1967. Gulf+Western had acquired Paramount Pictures the year before, so they reorganised and rebranded Desilu as Paramount Television, to match their new movie arm. For the best part of the next four decades, these two entities handled all Star Trek production, films and shows respectively. This changed in 1994 when the parent group, Paramount Communications (G+W’s new guise since 1989 when it divested tons of unrelated enterprises (sorry) to focus on media), was acquired through a 50.1% share purchase by Viacom worth nearly 10 billion dollars. Six years later, in 2000, Viacom hoovered up the CBS television network. And then — red alert, shields up! — in 2005 CBS and Viacom split into separate entities. However, Viacom held on to Paramount Pictures, while CBS took Paramount Television with it. The upshot is that since then, CBS has been handling all of the TV shows, while Viacom/Paramount has the movie rights (including the back catalogue and current/future productions (i.e. the 2009 reboot trilogy)). This split is also thought to be why there was such a long gap (12 years) between the end of Enterprise and the return of Trek to the small screen in Discovery. Think of the situation as two divorcees sharing custody of their child, wary of stepping on each other’s toes.
The upshot of all this is that Trek’s ‘assets’ — it’s aliens, ships, planets, concepts and so on — have apparently been divided between the two entities. Anything one of them wants to do has to be made sufficiently different so as not to anger the other. Support for this third explanation of both J. J. Abrams’ and Discovery’s discrepancies comes from a widely reported on and then quickly refuted Facebook post (now-deleted) by the great John Eaves. Eaves is an artist/illustrator who is well-known and well-respected in the fandom, who has designed or co-designed ships and technology for the franchise from 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, through most of the official films and shows, as well as the Star Trek Online MMORPG and even one of the many fan productions. (Along with fellow designer Scott Schneider, he’s also one of the few crew members to have worked on both TNG-era Trek, the 2009 movie reboots, and Discovery). In his post, discussing his and Schneider’s July picture in the 2019 Ships of The Line Star Trek calendar (which revealed, for the first time, the Discovery-flavour USS Enterprise), Eaves explained that having the list of copyrights to Star Trek’s concepts and designs split between the two entities necessitated a) CBS making a healthy amount of changes (of at least a 25% difference, per standard US copyright law) between the design of Discovery’s ships, props and uniforms, and those of the existing canon, and b) Paramount kicking the canon in the junk for their 2009 reboot films (hence the ‘alternate timeline’ approach). Given this, it’s interesting to note that CBS’s Discovery Starfleet ships don’t have the classic bridge viewscreens but the Paramount movie-style ‘bridge windows’, replete with a similar sexy-time HUD and superimposed graphical elements. Despite the schism, then, there is still some borrowing going on between the two.
Could this ‘flirting’ herald an eventual re-merging of the two entities, with a subsequent new TV series or film re-reboot flying more familiar colours? Possibly. As has been widely reported, Viacom and CBS have twice considered coming back together over the years. By all accounts it’s been a difficult process though, with Les Moonves, CEO at CBS, and Shari Redstone at Viacom butting heads each time. However, since Moonves departed at the end of 2018, it once again seems to be a viable proposition. It’s all a bit too big-business and over my head really, but you can read more about it in this CNBC article if you’re interested. Whatever the truth is — and personally, I suspect that despite CBS’s claims to the contrary, the legal issues are the main factor — it doesn’t make things easier for either party. Both the fans and CBS want to see great Star Trek on television, and Paramount/Viacom want us to enjoy it on the big screen too. But as long as there is a lack of unity between the rights holders, each vision is necessarily going to be an awkward, compromised one that will never capture the fanbase as a whole. In the case of both the recent film reboots and the new small-screen series, it is fun to imagine what they could have been if all of their tribbles had been in one basket.
Ultimately, I also have to wonder how much less contentious Discovery would be if it simply looked more like old-school Trek. Framing the show’s modern sensibilities and increased on-screen diversity in a visual language more readily parsed by fans of Matt Jeffries, Andy Probert, Doug Drexler, Mike Okuda, John Eaves, and all the other talented people who spent decades bringing Star Trek to our screens would please many more fans, both old and new (and cut the swearing, people, it just doesn’t work). Just as Enterprise managed to course-correct, redeem itself and even find some measure of extra respect after it was brutally cut down, I hope Discovery can do the same — before it too gets axed, rebooted or reset.
Image credits:
All Star Trek photographs and official images herein are copyright Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Studios.
Gulf and Western Industries logo from
http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/File:Gulf%2BWestern_logo.png
and based off
http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/the-ultimate-so-far-history-of-gremlin.html,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67177728
Paramount Pictures logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39076331
Paramount Communications logo:
https://logo-timeline.wikia.com/wiki/File:Paramount_Communications_Logo_1988-1995.png
Viacom (1986) logo:
https://logo-timeline.wikia.com/wiki/File:Viacom_1986.jpg
CBS (1992) logo:
https://logo-timeline.wikia.com/wiki/File:CBS_1992.svg
